Investigators hunt for clues after Mexican plane crashes in storm (updated)

Grupo Aeroportuario Del Centro Norte SAB De CV

01/08/2018 19:59

(Adds passenger quotes, video, GE comment)
    By Efrain Vazquez
    DURANGO, Mexico, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Investigators began
sifting through wreckage of an Aeromexico  AEROMEX.MX  passenger
jet on Wednesday, the head of the country's civil aviation
agency said, searching for clues to what caused it to crash as
it took off during stormy weather in northern Mexico.
     The Mexico City-bound Embraer 190 passenger jet smashed
into scrubland near the runway during takeoff from an airport in
northern Durango state on Tuesday. All 103 passengers and crew
survived by evacuating the plane before it caught fire. 
    Nearly everyone on the flight suffered minor injuries,
Mexican officials said.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N1UR23A
    Video purportedly of the crash recorded from a plane window
showed a dark sky and fog and the ground still visible moments
before a thud and shrieking passengers were heard.
    Reuters could not independently verify the video.
    "The impact was very strong. We wanted to think it was a
lightening strike," said Chicago resident and passenger Lorenzo
Nunez. "It was terrible, absolutely terrible." Nunez said he had
been visiting family in Durango.
    A time-lapse video posted by Webcams of Mexico, filmed
during the hour before the crash, showed dark clouds and fog or
rain moving in.
    Aeromexico said in a Wednesday morning Twitter post that 64 
people had been released from hospitals. 
    Two people were in critical condition, including the pilot
and a minor, the state health department said.
    Luis Gerardo Fonseca, director of Mexico's civil aviation
agency, told broadcaster ADN40 that his team began working at
the crash site around 7 a.m. local time (1200 GMT), along with
representatives of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board
(NTSB) and U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
    Representatives of Embraer SA  EMBR3.SA  and the maker of
the plane's engines, General Electric Co  GE.N , were also
assisting, Fonseca said.
    Officials said it was too early to say what caused the crash
of flight number 2431.
    It can take safety investigators months to piece together
the complex chain of events leading to an accident.
    Determining the cause of the Durango crash may be made
easier by the location of the crash, which should allow easy
access to evidence, including the two flight recorders, one for
cockpit voice recordings and the other for flight data.
    Under international rules, Mexico will lead the
investigation with support from Brazil, where the Embraer jet
was designed and built, and from the United States, where
General Electric Co  GE.N  made the CF34-10E engines.    

 (Additional reporting by David Alire Garcia and Daina Beth
Solomon in Mexico City, Tim Hepher in Paris and Tracy Rucinski
in Chicago; Writing by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Jonathan
Oatis, Toni Reinhold)
 ((tracy.rucinski@thomsonreuters.com; 1-312-550-5937; Reuters
Messaging: tracy.rucinski.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))